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Can you be fit and healthy, even if you’re overweight? And will working out, despite the extra pounds, reduce your risk of a heart attack?
The idea that you can be “fat but fit” has long been controversial. While health experts endorse physical activity as beneficial, many doctors view the concept of being “fat but fit” with suspicion.
Now a new study, believed to be the largest of its kind, suggests that even when overweight or obese people are free of health complications, they are still more likely to develop heart disease than their peers who aren’t overweight.
It didn’t matter whether obese people were free from diabetes, high blood pressure or high cholesterol, a condition sometimes referred to as “metabolically healthy obesity.” As long as they were obese, they were at modestly higher risk for having a stroke, at nearly 50 percent greater risk of coronary heart disease and had nearly double the risk of developing heart failure than people who were not overweight and in similar metabolic health.
People who were metabolically healthy but considered merely overweight were at a 30 percent greater risk of coronary heart disease compared to their normal weight and metabolically healthy peers.
“The bottom line is that metabolically healthy obesity doesn’t exist,” said Dr. Rishi Caleyachetty, of the College of Medical and Dental Sciences at the University of Birmingham in England, who was the lead author of the paper, published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. “Obesity is not a benign condition.”
The idea that you can be “fat but fit” has long been controversial. While health experts endorse physical activity as beneficial, many doctors view the concept of being “fat but fit” with suspicion.
Now a new study, believed to be the largest of its kind, suggests that even when overweight or obese people are free of health complications, they are still more likely to develop heart disease than their peers who aren’t overweight.
It didn’t matter whether obese people were free from diabetes, high blood pressure or high cholesterol, a condition sometimes referred to as “metabolically healthy obesity.” As long as they were obese, they were at modestly higher risk for having a stroke, at nearly 50 percent greater risk of coronary heart disease and had nearly double the risk of developing heart failure than people who were not overweight and in similar metabolic health.
People who were metabolically healthy but considered merely overweight were at a 30 percent greater risk of coronary heart disease compared to their normal weight and metabolically healthy peers.
“The bottom line is that metabolically healthy obesity doesn’t exist,” said Dr. Rishi Caleyachetty, of the College of Medical and Dental Sciences at the University of Birmingham in England, who was the lead author of the paper, published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. “Obesity is not a benign condition.”
‘Fat but Fit’? The Controversy Continues (Published 2017)
Even when overweight people are healthy, they are still more likely to develop heart disease than their peers who aren’t overweight, a new study reports.
www.nytimes.com
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